Tag: business

The Great American Postal System

Warning: snark might be encountered ahead.

I want to give a shout out to the US Postal System. Rates went up again recently. We know that probably means systemic improvements…right?

Of course! Although, um, postal workers in my area are concerned with mail not being picked up. Thanks to the price increase and a new modernization effort, we’ve gone from having five trucks to collect the mail and start its journey. Now we’re down to one. Wow, that’s efficiency!

Except, ah, my Visa credit card people are often concerned, sending emails, reminding us to pay our bill because the due date is coming up. “They should have received it,” my wife and I agreed. She added, “It’s due the fifteenth and I mailed it before the first.” This was back in November. “Maybe weather delayed it,” I put in. But this had never happened before. Now it’s happened three times.

Jeremy Schilling, president of the American Postal Workers Union Local 342 here in the Rogue Valley may have given us the answer. Going from five trucks to one doesn’t work well, he asserts. “Talent and Phoenix are now on the same route as Ashland. As a larger population center, Ashland requires its own truck. That being the case, the one truck (for all three cities) is already full when it reaches its next stops. This is happening across the whole state right now,” Schilling said. (h/t to rv-times.com)

This is the plan that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s 10-year “Delivering for America” plan has delivered to us. Besides the one truck replacing five idea, his plan calls for dropping the second daily pickup. So instead of racing to the Post Office to get something into the mail before the early collection time, it’s just the one collection at five PM.

See what higher price stamps get us?

But it’ll save a lot of money, DeJoy asserts. Schilling’s response speaks for me. “With this new truck route that saves so much money, are they telling me the money saved is because they’re going to abandon mail every day because the truck is too full?” Schilling asked. Seems so from my vantage, but I’m only a customer, which makes me an outsider.

Reduced trucks and fewer collection times are just two of the improvements which DeJoy has imposed. Under his plan, there is consolidation in the name of efficiency. The Institute for Policy Studies asserts what this could mean for me and my mail in their study, The USPS Network Consolidation Plan: What’s at Stake for Southern Oregon. Among their findings are Potential slower delivery times and Risk of transportation disruptions, which you always want when you’ve established an improvement plan for your delivery system.

The study found that under DeJoy’s improvement plan are several nuggets.

Under the USPS plan for the Medford facility, mail and packages posted by local residents and business will travel to Portland for processing – even if the destination address is in the local tri-county area. The state of Oregon has just one major artery going north-south, Interstate highway 5. In normal conditions, the 280-mile route between Medford, which is near the California border, and the Portland regional distribution and processing center site at the northern edge of the state takes about 4 hours and 28 minutes, or 9 hours round-trip.

A First Class letter shipped from Klamath Falls in Oregon to Sacramento, California would today travel 387 miles and take 6 hours. Under the consolidation plan, that letter, passing through Portland, rather than Medford, would travel twice as many miles, and take twice as long to make the journey – 858 miles and 13 hours of travel time.

Wow, longer time and further distances for things to be delivered! That has to be better, right, because more is better, isn’t it? Apparently that’s how DeJoy thinks. And think of how this will affect traffic, air pollution, and additional costs in gas and wear and tear on vehicles. Win win win! Fortunately, they are moving to electric vehicles. Money has been commited, but the transition has been slowed by none other than DeJoy.

You might be thinking, where have I heard of Louis DeJoy before? Well, the man was put into position by President Donald J. Trump (but not appointed), and we know that Trump is all about efficiency (yes, that’s sarcasm) and has an eye for capable people (yes, more sarcasm, given how many positions in his A team turned over in his only term. Answer: 92%. President Biden’s is 71%). Likewise, Trump’s cabinet appointments turned over more than Presidents Obama, Dubya and his pops, and Reagan.

DeJoy advocates for privatizing the USPS. So he doesn’t really want it to excel as a government service. What better way to gain advocates for privatizing a government system that’s working than by sabotaging it?

DeJoy is also the guy who handicapped the USPS and its ability to support dealing with COVID-19 and ensuring mail-in ballots arrived as expected during the 2020 election.

So he’s doing a heckuva job, as President Bush told Brownie ten days before Brownie resigned because he hadn’t done a heckuva job at all.

Yep, heckuva job, DeJoy. Way he’s going, it’ll cost a dollar for a stamp and the mail will take a month to reach its destination. Such efficiency!

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Thursday’s Wandering Thoughts

The coffee shop banned a man. He’s middle-aged. White. He’s been coming here as long as I have. I know from conversations with him that he accepts and promulgates several sharply right conspiracy theories and also promotes some unusual Christian ideas about how aliens founded or influenced Christianity. It’s a web which I couldn’t fully untangle.

He’s always struck me as a little lonely, eager for friendship, hungry for validation. One morning this week, he came in, set up somewhere, and placed an order. I didn’t hear any of that. He returned to his seat, picked up is gear, and headed for the door. Pausing by me, he said, “I showed some of them my website the other day, and they’ve banned me. They said they’d call the police if I came in here again.”

Turning, he shouted at the counter, “What happened to freedom of speech?” He stormed for the door. Pausing there, he yelled, “Fascists,” and was gone.

It’s a reflection about boundaries to me. I don’t know what was said the other day or how his website was presented. I know of two other people who were banned earlier this year because they ‘annoyed’ other customers. I witnessed some of that, and yeah, they were annoying. I have mixed thoughts about this, about businesses banning people. I don’t know what was said between the parties but I feel for the folks who struggle, and that’s what I’ve always thought I’ve seen with the banned three.

14

A Dad Dream

I was at some wildly busy location, flitting between meeting people, attending parties, eating foods — especially desserts — and working on some new business.

I’d arrived there via a large, black and shiny car provided by my father. The car was luxurious, expensive, and impressive. After hunting for a parking space, I double-parked on the street because I was late. Promising myself to come back soon to move the car because I might be blocking another in, I rushed into the complex. Piles of food were on tables, and I was urged to eat. I did eat some finger food, and a small bit of dessert, just to be nice, I told them, all of us laughing. The food was fantastic, so I had a little more and then went on to meet with others.

I encountered Dad. He was involved in some new business venture. To support his business plan, he’d developed a table of projected aggregate growth and had me look it over. I did, then went to meet with his potential backers.

The backers’ side, people who were going to fund Dad’s business, included my mentor. The mentor — never actually seen in the dream but heard from via others — had worked up numbers for Dad’s new business, too. The numbers between the two camps were grossly different. The two sides used me as an intermediary to bridge the differences. I mostly dealt with Dad, telling him again and again that my mentor thought Dad’s numbers were overly optimistic. We argued the venture’s fine points. I wanted to see his business plan but piqued, he refused to show me. He wouldn’t even tell me what the business was about, annoying me.

I went back to the mentor and spoke to an assistant, explaining Dad’s logic, defending it, really, and then asked to see their plans and projections. They wouldn’t let me have them and sent me back to Dad.

I returned to my car to move it, but there still wasn’t anywhere else to put it. I needed to leave it there, which worried me, but another person, a stranger to me, assured me it was fine and not to worry about it. I put the car out of mind.

I went back to Dad. He and my mentor were going to meet later. Dad told me to check into my room, clean up and rest so that I could join them later.

I went outside to a huge round bricked plaza. Great crowds of people prowled and socialized there because some convention was going on. Finding the front desk, I was given my room key. It was round, with concentric wheels of numbers on it. Each wheel of numbers told me where I was to go to find my room, starting with the outer wheel. The numbers were all in gold but used different fonts. As I looked at the wheel, a smiling man sitting in a chair, holding a drink, legs crossed, told me that the outer wheel’s numbers referred to the stairs to use. He then explained in an aside to a woman sitting beside him that the keys often confused newcomers.

But I knew how to use the key and told him. The outer gold letters were 4-2. I went off and found the stairs labeled 4-2. Before I went up to my room, though, Dad came and gave me his business plan to look over. Sitting down, I discovered that he’d hugely scaled it down from what he’d told me. It seemed like a completely different idea from what he’d explained, too. This had to do with some kind of ice cream confectionary shop that served other food with the ice cream. They were going to start with twenty shops in seven locations.

The changes dismayed me. I warned him that competition already existed doing what he proposed, and that his plan wasn’t as unique or revolutionary as he seemed to think. He was unfazed because the mentor had told him it was a good idea, and they were going to proceed. I was summoned to go eat, so I left it at that and went to find my table.

Dream end.

4

An Odd Dream – Work, Car, and Cat

Yes, another odd dream.

First, I had an odd job as some sort of quality assurance or quality control inspector. Those dream job details never cleared enough for me to figure out. Guess it wasn’t important.

I was working in a small, old building where a business was undergoing renovation. It had been a coffee shop. Coffee drinks were still available, so I was happy with that as I walk around with my clipboard, observing and scribbling notes. The business owner, a man, was there, talking about the planned changes. He was in high spirits; so was I, and the few other people in there. When the business owner mentioned that he needed some minor help, I happily volunteered.

Then I learned that he wasn’t going to re-open his business as a coffee shop but as a fitness center. He went around enthusing where equipment would be located, where different fitness stations would be, fitness services that he would be offering. Well, good for him, but…I wanted my coffee shop. I was disappointed.

Meanwhile, my wife came by. She said that our car, a Volkswagen Beetle, wasn’t uninsured, but she was waiting for a call that would take care of that. (Please note, I’ve never owned a Beetle.) I was like, okay. She left again, errands to run. I continued my vague inspection job.

The business owner mentioned that he needed a car, did anyone have one that he could borrow? I offered my VW. As he thanked me, he told me that he would be driving to another part of the city, but he would be back later, if that was okay. Remembering that the car wasn’t insured, I asked with surprise, “You’re going to drive it?” He answered, “What else would I do with a car?” And laughed.

I didn’t want him to drive the car because it wasn’t insured. However, I wanted to help him. I questioned him. Would he be careful? Has he ever had an accident? What kind of driver was he?

My wife returned. She reminded me not to use the car because it wasn’t insured. I prepared to tell her that I’d loaned it out when someone came by and told me the owner wasn’t going to use it after all.

Then, though, came word that our dog was loose. (Please note, I’ve never had a dog.) I joined my wife out in a woody, muddy field, looking for our dog. As we walked around, looking, she started calling a name. The name was of a cat who passed away twenty years ago. I asked her, “Are we looking for a dog or a cat?”

She didn’t answer, going off. I was convinced we were looking for a lost cat and not a dog. I started calling the dead cat’s name as I walked through a meadow. Another cat came running across the meadow with its tail up, meowing at me. It didn’t resemble the dead cat at all, but I knew it was my pet. The deceased animal was a short-hair gray tabby, and the approaching cat was white with a torti ear and matching torti tail. Before the cat reached me, I turned and stepped back into the coffee shop under renovation to answer some questions about my work.

Dream end

0

Airport & Parking Dream

Airports are another frequent feature in my dreams. I was in one again last night.

It was a lengthy dream. First, there was going to the airport. I was with my wife at that point and we just walked into the airport. Modern and friendly, the airport was as busy and hectic as a children’s playground. I met with a friend who sold us tickets. Business was slow, so he was also fishing and selling his catch. We laughed about that. Most interesting was that his fishing lines rose into the sky like he was controlling kites. We didn’t think anything of it.

After buying the tickets, I had time and busied myself shopping, eating, and walking around, classic time killing, airport style. While doing this, I saw a wonderful orb spider web. It was perfect. Just as I was about to comment on it, a woman ahead of me turned to it. Dressed in a red dress with red shoes and hat, this thin blonde woman walked into the spider web. As she did, I told her, “You’re walking into a spider web.”

She freaked when the web came across her face, and fell backwards. I was expecting that and easily caught her shoulders and kept her upright. While she expressed thanks, I helped her collect her purse, hat, and shoes. Yes, she’d lost her shoes. She joked, “I was scared right out of my shoes.” After helping her, I checked the spider web. It remained intact, which pleased me.

I encountered several friends. One was looking for me. She needed help with her math work for her college class. She showed me the problem. Hugely involved, it was supposed to be a formula for setting an item’s price. She was asking, “What should I do first?” I tried explaining math’s order of operations. She didn’t understand. Borrowing her textbook, I hunted for items in the book to help her, and then worked on the problem myself.

It took more time than I expected, and I didn’t solve it. Now I was two hours late and needed to rush. Going through the airport, I saw my friend again. Others near me wondered aloud what his lines were for. I explained to them that business was bad so he was augmenting his income by catching and selling fish. They didn’t believe me so I took them to him and verified it.

Then, really, I needed to go because I was late. But I couldn’t recall where I’d parked my car. Then, thinking I knew where I’d parked my car, I needed to figure a way to get there because it was far. I learned a shuttle was available to reach it. I purchased a ticket for the shuttle. It showed up after a few minutes. I put my things in the trunk and rode with the rest. At the other end, I got off, collected my stuff, and looked around. I knew right off that this wasn’t where my car was parked. I went to the man and told him. He said I needed to take a second shuttle from there, and to put my stuff back into the trunk. When I went to do so, that car had left without me. I was surprised and a little upset but immediately started working on another plan to reach my car. Looking around, I started figuring out where I was and then decided I could walk to my car.

That’s where the dream ended.

0

The Business Dream

I was running some kind of operation. I’m not certain if it was a small business or a unit of some larger organization; that never became clear. The place of business was sprawling and dark. I didn’t have many people working for me, perhaps a dozen. Things were stable and running smoothly, but tight.

A tall white man came to the place, looking for the manager/owner, which was me. He told me that he owned a business down the street. He expected a great deal of business in the coming days. Spillover business would be coming to me; he wanted to ensure that I was sufficiently manned for the rush. I bristled, brushing him off, telling him, we’re fine and it’s not his business. He went away for a bit but returned with the same message, imploring me to listen to him.

So I listened, thinking while I did, that I was already stretched thin. Putting more people on one shift would mean moving them from another and perhaps overtime. I didn’t want to risk overtime and schedule changes if this business wasn’t going to materialize, because I would take a loss.

I asked him, “How many do you think will come here?” He replied, “Forty-eight.” My workers were listening. Forty-eight struck us all as a significant amount. The other man told me that they would probably mostly order smoothies. I asked him more questions: what time of day was this rush expected? Would it be all at once or stretched out? He said that he didn’t have that information, that those were good questions, that he would need to check that and get back to me.

Dream ended.

0

Questioning Dreams

The two remembered dream segments from last night were questioning what was going on and what was happening next. None addressed the current news or anything, but used metaphors to express my concerns.

In the first dream exploration, I was at a start-up company. The dream featured many of the people associated with the first start-up employing me after I retired from the U.S. Air Force. A big event was happening, but it had flopped and fizzled. I was concerned; what was going to happen next? I wanted to know. I knew there’d been a plan in place, but it depended on some milestones, and weren’t due to happen for another twelve to eighteen months. What was going to happen in the meantime until then?

I kept asking people. My question confused most others but two friends said, “Here, play him the tape.” They took me into an office and played me a recording off an old-fashioned answering machine with a cassette tape. I listened but couldn’t understand any of it because it was in another language.

I told them that I didn’t understand. A woman came in to stop me from hearing the tape. One friend told the other, “Turn on the translator and play it.” The friend turned on the translator but the woman hurried me out, telling my friends, “He’s not supposed to hear that.”

So something is up, I thought. There’s a plan, but I don’t know it. I wanted to know it, and felt frustrated.

Another distraction struck in the form of the next door business. They’d closed for good. I was sorry that it’d happened. The doors were open and people were inside cleaning it out.

I went in to check it out. Bins overflowed with grain, nuts, and kibble. I said something to the effect the place needed to be cleaned up. The men told me, “Yes, that’s what we’re doing.” I asked if I could help. That amused them. “Go ahead.”

I shoveled loads of stuff into a large, wheeled silver bin. When it was full, I wheeled it out the door and parked it, setting the brake.

A young white woman happened along. A bubbly person, she wanted to know what was going on, peppering me with questions but not waiting for any answers. As I turned to return inside the store, I saw her moving my silver bin. “Careful,” I warned her.

We were on a hill. I told her, “Set the brake.” She went to do that but then turned around and started talking to other people. The bin started rolling down the hill. I shouted, “Look out.” Before I could move, it went completely down the hill and off the cliff.

I was shocked. I knew people were down below. I figured they were injured.

The woman turned around. “Where’d the bin go?”

“Down over the edge,” I replied.

She ran down to look. I followed. When we got down there, it was still going through the air. I was surprised that it hadn’t landed. It looked like it was going to hit people but landed in an empty space.

Shrugging, she walked away. “I guess everything is okay.”

The dreams ended.

0

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Listening to the news from various places but mostly the U.S., I’m hearing a lot of calls to open up businesses and start up the economy. I thought they needed theme music. I’m recommended the Rolling Stones with “Start Me Up” (1981).

As a point of order, I’m not in favor of most places in the U.S. starting up. Insufficient testing is in place, tracing has huge gaps, and not enough is known about COVID-19 at this point. It seems like many places are taking a shrugged shoulders, fingers crossed, half-assed approach. While plans don’t need to be perfect, half-assed rarely succeeds. History will be our judge.

Check out the moves from Jagger.

 

0

‘Nother Day, ‘Nother Rant

Yes, it’s a new year but the first-world blues never end. Sometimes they lead to a rant.

Today’s focus is on the pharmacy.

They’ve done a fine job in the past, which is probably what lit this rant. I called my prescription refill in on Sunday, Jan. 5. The happy recording said it would be ready by Monday at 4 PM, all as completely expected.

That’s what’s called ‘foreshadowing’, kids.

Got in line today, Tuesday, Jan. 7. Was the only one in line. One cashier was in action. She was helping someone finish his purchase. When it was completed, she turned, and — ignoring me, shall we note — called across the store, “Rhonda, your prescription is ready.”

Now, that’s okay. She was helping Rhonda before, Rhonda’s prescription wasn’t ready, forcing Rhonda to wait, but, hey, do you mind saying something to the only customer in your line? I would consider it good manners and common sense.

After Rhonda’s purchase was completed, a few minutes later, it was my turn. Hey, short story, my prescription wasn’t ready. It wasn’t here. It would be here this afternoon.

No apology nor explanation. No reason for why I wasn’t called about it.

Now, as it happens, I live in town, so it’s not a big deal. I can return. But what about the people who have mobility issues, or who live outside of town, who need help to pick up their prescription, or who must make a special trip?

Yeah, that’s my rant. After dismissing my irritation (yes, via this post) (after returning a few hours later for the prescription), I’m good to go.

Onward.

 

1

Floofmerce

Floofmerce (floofinition) – The activity of buying and selling information, materials, and services for pet or animal owners.

In use: “Many TV ads appeal to pet owners’ sense of responsibility and desire to keep their pets happy and healthy, resulting in revenue numbers that are pushing floofmerce to new heights.”

2

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